“A bit of a little fellow,” said Mr. Swan. “I can’t think he could have got so far; more likely he’s lying behind a hedge somewhere; but I thought it best to try first here.”
“He’s not here,” the station-keeper said again. He answered curtly, his sympathies being all with the fugitive, and he could not but give the troubled schoolmaster a corner of his mind. “It’s only a month since you lost the last one,” he said. “If it was my house the boys ran away from I should not like it.”
“Talk of things you know something of,” said Mr. Swan hotly; and then he added, shaking his head; “It is not my fault. My wife and I do everything we can, but it’s those rough boys and their practical jokes.”
“Little fellows, they don’t seem to understand them kind of jokes,” said the railway man.
Mr. Swan shook his head. It was not his fault. He was sorry, and vexed, and ashamed. “I would rather have lost the money twice over,” he said. Then he turned and gave a searching glance all around. Lilias quaked, and her heart sank within her. She held her little brother close to her breast. If he should stir, if he should cry, all would be over. She knew her situation well enough. Either their enemy would go away and get bloodhounds and fierce wicked men to put on their track, during which time the fugitives would have time to get into some wonderful cave, or to be taken into some old, old house by some benevolent stranger, and so escape; or else he would come straight to the very place where they were, guided by some influence unfavourable to them. Lilias stood and held her breath. “Oh, be still, Nello, be still, he is looking!” she whispered into Nello’s ear. Her limbs were nearly giving way, but she resisted fate and held out.
The schoolmaster made long inspection of all the landscape. “He was specially commended to me, too—I was warned—I was warned,” he said. Then he turned to the station-keeper, giving him the most urgent injunctions. “If he comes here you will secure him at once,” he said, filling Lilias with dismay, who did not see the shrug of the man’s shoulders, and the look with which he turned aside. Thus their retreat was cut off, the little girl thought, with anguish indescribable; how then were they to get home? This thought was so dreadful that Lilias was not relieved as she otherwise would have been by the sound of the wheels and the horse’s hoofs as the gig turned, and their enemy drove away. He had gone in his own person, but had he not left a horrible retainer to guard the passage? And how, oh how was she to take Nello home? She did not know where the next station was. She did not know the way in this strange, desolate, unknown country. “Nello,” she cried, in a whisper of despair, “we must get into that wood, it is the only thing we can do; they will not look for us there. I don’t know why, but I feel sure they will not look for us there. And perhaps we shall meet some one who will take care of us. Oh, Nello, rouse up, come quick, come quick. Perhaps there may be a hermit living there, perhaps——. Come, Nello, can you not go a little further? Oh, try, try.”
“Oh, Lily, I am so tired—I am so sleepy”
“I am tired too,” she said, a little rush of tears coming to her eyes; and then they stumbled on together, holding each other up. The wood looked gay and bright in the early morning. The sun had come out, which warmed everything, and the bright autumn colour on the trees cheered the children as a similar hour, and the beauty of the wild creatures of the woods, cheered the poet:—
“Si che a bene sperar m’era cagione
Di quella fera alla gaietta pelle
L’ora del tempo, e la dolce stagione.”
The trees seemed to sweep with a great luxuriance of shadow over a broad stretch of country. It must be possible to find some refuge there. There might be—a hermit, perhaps, in a little cell, who would give them nuts and some milk from his goat—or a charcoal burner, wild but kind, like those Lilias remembered to have seen in the forest with wild locks hanging over their eyes. If only no magician should be there to beguile them into his den, pretending to be kind! Thus Lilias mixed fact and fiction, her own broken remembrances of Italian woods sounding as fictitious among the English elms and beeches as the wildest visions of fancy. For this wood, though it had poetic corners in it, was traversed by the highroad, from end to end, and was as innocent of charcoal-burners as of magicians. And it turned out a great deal further off than they thought. They walked and walked, and still it lay before them, smiling in its yellow and red, waving and beckoning in the breeze, which was less chilly now that the sun was up. The sun reached to the footpath behind the hedge, and warmed the little wayfarers through and through—that was the best thing that had happened to them—for how good it is to be warmed when one is chilled and weary; and what a rising of hope and courage there is when the misty dawn disperses before the rising of the brave sun!